Lakers town? Clippers town? No, a silly debate: Opinion

The Los Angeles Clippers' Blake Griffin controls the ball as the Los Angeles Lakers' Pau Gasol defends Tuesday. The affections of the city hang in the balance. No, not really. (Photo by Danny Moloshok/Associated Press)

Does it seem that the less united people are about things that really matter, the more united they pretend to be about things that really don’t?

The Lakers and Clippers opened the basketball season Tuesday night, the two Los Angeles teams playing against each other at Staples Center, so there was another round in sports media’s ever-unresolved debate about whether this is a Lakers town or a Clippers town.

As if it’s one or the other. Or should be one or the other. Or has been one (a Lakers town, presumably, because of their decades of success) and could switch all of a sudden to the other (a Clippers town, because of their newfound respectability).

As if, were the question of which basketball team owns the city to be answered, anyone would know what to do with the information.

Sportswriters everywhere like to speculate in exaggerated terms about the emotions of the city — or, in the popular style, “a city.” A Los Angeles Times columnist wrote this month that the resurgent Dodgers have recaptured “a city’s heart.”

Never mind that, according to the TV ratings, 9 out of 10 L.A. households weren’t watching the Dodgers’ recent playoff games. It must be that their hearts were so wrapped up in the Dodgers that they couldn’t bear to look.

Probably only in special cases, such as the Boston Red Sox’s success in the months following the Boston Marathon bombing, does A City really rally behind a team as a symbol of the town. The rest of the time, fans are fans and most of the rest are only vaguely aware there’s a season on.

The political world feigns unanimity this way, but only once every four years when it imagines The Country has chosen a leader (when really it’s only a slim majority of voters) and pretends one party is dominant and the other moribund. The fantasy soon fades with the new president’s approval rating.

In disappointment over our increasing division over real-life issues, people pretend to seek consensus in things like sports. As long as the Clippers don’t threaten to shut down the NBA after their opening-night loss, this will remain an amusing fantasy and a harmless distraction.